Re: Organizations with two or more Managers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler (lynn_at_garlic.com)
Date: 01/01/05 

Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 17:48:26 -0700

"Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri@iahu.com> writes:
> Are multiple managers exception rather than rule? Does any fortune
> 500 companies have organization chart that is not a tree?
>
> Handling trees is infinetely more simple than [directed acyclic]
> graphs. For one thing, how would you specify a constraint that your
> graph is acyclic? If your graph happens to be a tree, how would you
> define this constraint?
>
> Next, assume your RDBMS have SQL extensions allowing to express
> queries on graph (represented as adjacency list). Expect some
> problems. How good is the cost model? Can optimizer come up with a
> realistic prediction how many joins it would perform? Certainly not,
> as for a given program it's even impossible to tell in advance if
> the program going to stop at all.
>
> Those are couple of reasons why tree encodings really shine.

in the early 80s, one of boyd's assertions was that modern corporate
culture is reflection of many of the executives getting training on
how to run large organizations as members of the US army during ww2.

basically he contrasted much of the experienced and professional
german military with the US army at entry to the war ... large numbers
of quickly recruited and quickly trained individuals and only a very
small group of professionals to direct them. as a result much of the
strategy was based on exceedingly heavy overwhelming resources with
extremely rigid command & control structures (attempting to leverage
scarce skill resource across massive amount of resources and large
numbers of inexperienced/unqualified people) ... somewhat related to
pushing all decisions as high as possible up the organization (as
opposed to pushing decisions to the best qualified person on the
spot).

boyd would contrast that with the blitzkrieg and guderian's directive
about "verbal orders only". the scenario was that in times of heavy
action ... that the only people that never make a mistake are the
people that never do anything ... if you acting and especially having
to act quickly ... there are going to be mistakes. guderian's
directive supposedly epitomized that he trusted his troops as
professionals to make their own decisions ... and he didn't want to
have any bureaucrats running around afterwards trying to blame them for
possible mistakes; he wanted to encourage that the person on the spot
was to make the best decision he deemed possible (and not have to
constantly worry about having any sort of paper trail that bureaucrats
might later use to play monday afternoon quarterback).

this is slightly related to the humerous definition of auditors as the
people that go around the battlefield, after the war, stabbing the
wounded ... a posting about a misunderstanding related to this and a
number of auditors:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out

the other contrast might be a set of generals superbly qualified to
make decisions about overall strategic issues ... but totally
unqualified to make decisions about any moment-to-moment tactical
issues. It sometimes shows up in the split between CEO and COO
... where the CEO is handling long-term strategic issues and may be
totally unqualified to handle the day-to-day issues faced by the COO.

you also see something similar in some techno startups where the VCs
may want to have somebody they select as vp of finance and possibly
even vp of marketing.

my past boyd postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and numerous boyd references from around the web
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2 

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

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